12.  A SOUL’S TRAGEDY.

[Published in 1846 (with Luria) as No.  VIII. of Bells and Pomegranates (Poetical Works, 1889, Vol.  IV., pp. 257-302).  Acted by the Stage Society at the Court Theatre, March 13, 1904.]

The development of Browning’s genius, as shown in his plays, has been touched on in dealing with Colombe’s Birthday.  That play, as I intimated, shows the first token of transition from the comparatively conventional dramatic style of the early plays to the completely unconventional style of the later ones, which in turn lead almost imperceptibly to the final pausing-place of the monologue.  From A Blot in the ’Scutcheon to Colombe’s Birthday is a step; from Colombe’s Birthday to A Soul’s Tragedy and Luria another step; and in these last we are not more than another step from Men and Women and its successors.  In A Soul’s Tragedy the action is all internalized.  Outward action there is, and of a sufficiently picturesque nature; but here, considerably more than even in Colombe’s Birthday, the interest is withdrawn from the action, as action, and concentrated on a single character, whose “soul’s tragedy,” not his mere worldly fortunes, strange and significant as these are, we are called on to contemplate.  Chiappino fills and possesses the scene.  The other characters are carefully subordinated, and the impression we receive is not unlike that received from one of Browning’s most vivid and complete monologues, with its carefully placed apparatus of sidelights.

The character of Chiappino is that of a Djabal degenerated; he is the second of Browning’s delineations of the half-deceived and half-deceiving nature, the moral hybrid.  Chiappino comes before us as a much-professing yet apparently little-performing person, moody and complaining, envious of his friend Luitolfo’s better fortune, a soured man and a discontented patriot.  But he is quite sure of his own complete probity.  He declaims bitterly against his fellow-townsmen, his friend, and the woman whom he loves; all of whom, he asseverates, treat him unjustly, and as he never could, by any possibility, treat them.  While he is thus protesting to Eulalia, his friend’s betrothed, to whom for the first time he avows his own love, a trial is at hand, and nearer than he or we expect.  Luitolfo rushes in.  He has gone to the Provost’s palace to intercede on behalf of his banished friend, and in a moment of wrath has struck and, as he thinks, killed the Provost:  the guards are after him, and he is lost.  Is this the moment of test?  Apparently; and apparently Chiappino proves his nobility.  For, with truly heroic unselfishness, he exchanges dress with his friend, induces him, in a sort of stupefaction of terror, to escape, and remains in his place, “to die for him.”  But the harder test has yet to come.  Instead of the Provost’s guards, it is the enthusiastic populace that bursts in upon him, hailing him as saviour and liberator.  The people have risen in revolt, the guards have fled, and the people call on the striker of the blow to be their leader.  Chiappino says nothing.  “Chiappino?” says Eulalia, questioning him with her eyes.  “Yes, I understand,” he rejoins,